Israel/Palestine

Two eminent mainstream journalists -- Tom Friedman and Joe Klein -- recently called for United States to disengage from the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, on the grounds that Palestinians were too divided to make a deal and the Israelis were not interested in one. Friedman couldn't bring himself to draw the logical conclusion -- if the United States truly going to "disengage," that also means cutting off its economic and military assistance -- but Klein did.   

I have a certain sympathy for this position (and even wrote similar things myself before I wised up), but there are two problems with this specific idea. The first is that it is a meaningless prescription: There's no way to cut the aid package (or even put a hold on it, which is what Klein recommends) so long as Congress is in hock to AIPAC and the other groups in the status quo lobby. And unless I've missed something, I doubt groups like J Street would support it either.

Friedman and Klein's statements do convey how discourse in the United States is changing, but the specific recommendation they offer here is a non-starter. Remember: we are dealing with a Congress that just voted to condemn the Goldstone Report by a vote of 344-24. The aid package may be indirectly subsidizing the settlements and threatening Israel’s future as a Jewish majority state, but a supine House and Senate will still sign the annual check.

The second problem, I fear, is that it is too little, too late. Having dithered, delayed and dissembled ever since the Oslo Accords -- while the number of settlers more than doubled -- we are about to face an entirely different problem. The sun is now setting on the "two-state solution" -- if it is not already well below the horizon -- and pretty soon everyone will have to admit that they are sitting around in the dark and pretending they see daylight.

Be careful what you wish for. Israel is going to get what it has long sought: permanent control of the West Bank (along with de facto control over Gaza). The Palestinian Authority is increasingly irrelevant and may soon collapse, General Keith Dayton's mission to train reliable and professional Palestinian security forces will end, and Israel will once again have full responsibility for some 5.2 million Palestinian Arabs under its control. And the issue will gradually shift from the creation of a viable Palestinian state -- which was the central idea behind the Oslo process and the subsequent "Road Map" -- to a struggle for civil and political rights within an Israel that controls all of mandate Palestine. And on what basis could the United States oppose such a campaign, without explicitly betraying its own core values?

In this regard, it was telling that Martin Indyk -- a key figure in the lobby and far from a harsh critic of Israeli policy -- is quoted in the Times saying "more than likely, we are entering a new era." I think he's right, and he sounds worried. He should be, because the Obama administration isn't remotely ready for it.  

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I'm still preoccupied with finishing a conference paper (the topic: Why it is so hard for states to "cut their losses" in wars of choice, and how they can do so more effectively?), and so I can't do a lengthy blog post today. But in addition to the excellent commentary provided by FP's Marc Lynch, I recently came across two short pieces that are well worth reading and I wanted to alert you to them.

The first is Tony ("Rootless Cosmopolitan") Karon's analysis of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's announcement that he is not going to run for re-election. Karon suggests that this is partly "political theater," but makes it clear that it is a setback for Obama's increasingly incoherent Middle East "peace effort." 

The second is by Robert Dreyfuss on The Nation's blog, right here. It is, to say the least, a rather damning indictment of U.S. Middle East policy since Obama took office. And the obvious question is: Why has Obama's team caved so fast and so quickly, after its promising start? 

I never thought I'd write the following words, but is it possible that Obama's handling of the I-P peace process might actually end up being worse than George Bush's? It's still too soon to go there, but the fact that the question even occurred to me ain't exactly encouraging.

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Back in 2007, we wrote that AIPAC has an "almost unchallenged hold on Congress." Little has happened since then to alter that conclusion, and we will probably get another demonstration of Congressional spinelessness this week. On Tuesday, the House is scheduled to vote on H.R. 867, an AIPAC-sponsored resolution denouncing the recent Goldstone Report on possible war crimes by Hamas and Israel during the Gaza War last year. You can read the resolution here. You should then read Judge Goldstone's response here, which points out the errors in the House resolution. And then read historian Tony Judt's eloquent statement here. If you're convinced that the resolution makes a mockery of America's professed commitment to justice and human rights, then you might express that sentiment here or here. Or just call your Congressman's office and tell him/her to grow a backbone and vote against it.

Meanwhile, over in Israel itself, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is completing the Obama administration's humiliating retreat from the principles set forth in the president's Cairo speech of less than five months ago. In a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Clinton did not criticize continued Israeli home demolitions in East Jerusalem (a practice she had previously denounced), and praised Netanyahu for making "unprecedented concessions" on settlement expansion. Huh? This is Clintonian double-talk worthy of her husband. Netanyahu's "concession" was to insist that Israel would keep building whatever and wherever it wished in East Jerusalem, and would also continue the "natural growth" of settlements in the West Bank, but would not start any completely new settlements for awhile. Bear in mind that virtually every country in the world regards all of the settlements -- both the unauthorized outposts and the vast neighborhoods built by the Israeli government -- as illegal under international law, and the United States used to say this too. And for this "concession" the Palestinians are supposed to enter into another meaningless round of discussions, while the bulldozers and construction crews continue to eat away at the land on which they hope to establish a state of their own. To praise Netanyahu's position as an "unprecedented concession" is like discovering someone is robbing your house, and then expressing gratitude when they offer to do it a bit more slowly.

The two-state solution was on life-support when Obama took office, and at first it appeared he might make a serious effort to nurse it back to health and make it a reality. At least, that's what he said he was going to do.  Instead, he and his Secretary of State are in the process of pulling out the plug. But what will they do when "two states for two peoples" isn't an option and everybody finally admits it, and the Palestinians begin to demand equal rights in "greater Israel?" Will the United States support their claims for equality, democracy, and individual rights, or will it continue to defend and subsidize what will then be an apartheid state? Well, if it's up to our courageous reps in Congress, you know what the answer will be.

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If I were President Obama (now there's a scary thought!), I'd ask some smart people on my foreign policy team to start thinking hard about "Plan B." What's Plan B? It's the strategy that he's going to need when it becomes clear that his initial foreign policy initiatives didn't work. Obama's election and speechifying has done a lot to repair America's image around the world -- at least in the short term -- in part because that image had nowhere to go but up. But as just about everyone commented when he got the Nobel Peace Prize last week, his foreign policy record to date is long on promises but short on tangible achievements. Indeed, odds are that the first term will end without his achieving any of his major foreign policy goals.

To be more specific, I'd bet that all of the following statements are true in 2012.

1. There won't be a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, and Israel will still be occupying the West Bank and controlling the Gaza Strip. More and more people are going to conclude that "two states for two peoples" is no longer possible, and that great Cairo speech will increasingly look like hollow rhetoric.

2. The United States will still have tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan. Victory will not be within sight.

3. Substantial U.S. personnel will remain in Iraq (relabeled as "training missions"), and the political situation will remain fragile at best. 

4. The clerical regime in Iran will still be in power, will still be enriching nuclear material, will still insist on its right to control the full nuclear fuel cycle, and will still be deeply suspicious of the United States. Iran won't have an actual nuclear weapon by then, but it will be closer to being able to make one if it wishes.

5. There won't be a new climate change agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

6. Little progress will have been made toward reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world. The United States and Russia may complete a new strategic arms agreement by then, but both states will still have thousands of nuclear warheads in their stockpiles. None of the nine current nuclear weapons states will have disarmed, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is still unratified three years from now.

Other achievements that we won't see include the balancing of the federal budget, a major revamping of global financial architecture, reform of the U.N. Security Council, a significant increase in the size of the State Department or the foreign aid budget, or the completion of new trade round. I'm not even sure we will have closed Gitmo or ended "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" by then.

Assuming he wins re-election, therefore, President Obama is going to be looking at a foreign policy "to do" list with remarkably few boxes checked off. And somebody ought to start thinking about this possibility now, because wise statecraft ought to anticipate the circumstances one is going to face a few years hence, instead of focusing solely on what's in the in-box today.

So what's Plan B? I'm still wrestling with that issue myself, but here's a quick sketch of some of the fundamental ideas. Plan B begins by recognizing that the United States remains the most secure great power in modern history and that most of damage we have suffered recently has come from scaring ourselves into foolish foreign adventures. It means rejecting the belief -- common to both neoconservatives and liberal internationalists -- that virtually every global problem requires an American solution and "American leadership." It acknowledges that social engineering in complex traditional societies is something we don't know how to do and probably can't learn, but it takes comfort from the fact that it is also a task that we don't have to do. It accepts that there are a few bad guys out there that do need to be confronted, captured, and sometimes killed, but understands that the more force we use and the heavier our footprint is, the more resistance we will ultimately face. And yes, Plan B understands that sometimes bad things will happen to Americans, and there is nothing we can do to completely eliminate all foreign dangers. Get used to it.

Plan B means playing "hard to get" more often, so that other states don't take us for granted and so that they bear a greater share of common burdens. It means exploiting balances of power and playing divide-and-conquer, instead of trying to impose a preponderance of U.S. power on every corner of the globe. It prizes the individual freedoms that are the core of American democracy -- freedoms that are threatened by a steady diet of foreign wars -- and it recognizes that other societies will have to find their own way toward more pluralist and participatory forms of government, and at their own pace. It seeks to maintain armed forces that are second to none but eschews squandering lives or money on peripheral wars that are neither vital nor winnable. It rejects "special relationships" with any other state, if by that one means relationships where we support other states even when they do foolish things that are not in our interest (or theirs). 

And Plan B proceeds from the belief that other states will be more likely to follow America's lead if they look at us and like what they see. America used to dazzle the world by offering up a vision of opportunity, equality, energy and competence that was unimaginable elsewhere. The danger now is that America is increasingly seen as a land of crumbling infrastructure, mountainous debt, uninsured millions, fraying public institutions, and xenophobic media buffoons. Over the longer term, getting our house in order back home will to a lot more to shore up our global position than conducting endless foot patrols through the Afghan countryside.

Postscript: Some smart observers -- such as Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic -- have a more favorable view of Obama's performance to date. They discern a trademark style in Obama's cautious and reflective approach to most policy issues: he sets forth general goals, waits to see how others react, gauges the limits of the possible, and then decides on a course of action. There's probably something to this view, and surely the patient examination of alternative policy options makes more sense than relying on one's "gut instincts" and then stubbornly refusing to admit the possibility of error.

Whether one relies on calm deliberation or a president's entrails, however, the proof of any approach to policymaking is its ability to deliver tangible results. And here the jury is still out. My concern is that Obama has yet to use American power -- in either its hard and soft forms -- in ways designed to shape the calculations and actions of both allies and adversaries. Where Bush erroneously believed that the United States could simply dictate to the rest of the world, thus far Obama seems unwilling to wield American power against stubborn opponents or withhold U.S. support from recalcitrant allies. His speeches are a valuable tool, but ultimately others need to know that there is resolve and purpose and tangible actions behind them. Sometimes foreign policy is like community organizing -- i.e., you're trying to herd diverse groups to work together for a common goal and your task is to overcome suspicions so that the common ground can be seized. But at other times it's more like a gang war. And when it's the latter, you have to take names, draw lines, and use the power at one's disposal to get the outcomes you want.

Think about it this way: how many foreign leaders are now grateful because the United States has backed them and their prospects are improving, and how many governments are now worried because the United States is successfully using its power to undermine or thwart them and force them to rethink their positions?

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If you ever questioned whether Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was bad for the United States and for Israel too, you ought to ponder Turkey's decision to suspend a multinational air-force exercise last weekend. Why? Because it's a prime example of how pursuing the goal of "greater Israel" -- which means retaining control of the West Bank and Gaza and preventing a true two-state solution -- is undermining U.S. and Israeli interests.

Here's the background: For the past decade or more, Turkey has been Israel's closest ally in the Muslim world. It has bought a lot of weapons from Israeli defense manufacturers, permitted the Israeli Air Force to conduct military exercises over Turkish airspace (which is especially valuable given Israel's small size), and been an effective mediator between Israel and some of its adversaries. It was by all accounts a very valuable relationship.

Unfortunately, Israel's assault on Gaza back in December and January appalled many Turks and embarrassed the Turkish government, which had been helping facilitate back-channel negotiations between Israel, Syria, and Hamas. Turkish anger at Israel's behavior led to the infamous spat between Prime Minister Recip Erdogan and Israeli President Shimon Peres at Davos in January, and opposition to the proposed air exercise -- which would have involved U.S., Israeli, Turkish, and other NATO forces -- had been growing in recent months. In particular, critics argued that Turkey's armed forces should not be collaborating with the same air force that had pummeled the defenseless Gazans last winter.

Last weekend, Turkey announced that it would not permit Israel to participate in the planned exercise, with the Foreign Ministry explicitly invoking the situation in Gaza as justification. (There's a story in Ha'aretz today suggesting it was really a dispute over arms shipments, but that's frankly pretty hard to believe). The announcement led Israel's ever-compliant U.S. patron to declare that it would not participate either, which in turn led other NATO states to withdraw too. So the exercise was "postponed," and it remains to be seen whether the dispute will be resolved and the maneuvers rescheduled. Meanwhile, Turkey and Syria held a successful diplomatic meeting earlier this week and announced a wide-ranging series of agreements, publicly pledging to "build a common future." Ha'aretz reports that the two countries will conduct military exercises in the near future as well.

Now step back and consider how we got here. A good relationship with Turkey has been a major asset for Israel and strong Israeli-Turkish relations are good for the United States (which is an ally of both countries). The United States, Turkey, Israel, and other NATO countries benefit from joint military exercises. But because Israel continues to occupy the West Bank and Gaza and refuses to allow the Palestinians to have a state of their own, it faces continued resistance from groups like Hamas, including the firing of rockets at Israeli towns. And because Israel's leaders believe that disproportionate force is the only way to deal with that resistance, the result is Operation Cast Lead, where the IDF lays waste to Gaza and kills a lot of innocent civilians. And this inflames public opinion in Turkey (and elsewhere), thereby placing a valuable strategic relationship at risk.

Israel's defenders often claim that it is a major strategic asset for the United States, but Israel's pariah status within the region reduces its strategic value significantly. It explains why Israel could not participate in the 1991 or 2003 wars with Iraq, and why it is difficult for Arab governments who share Israel's concerns about Iran to openly collaborate with Israel or United States to address that issue. And make no mistake: The occupation is now the main barrier to Israel's full acceptance within the region, as the 2007 Arab League peace plan makes clear. If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were resolved and Israel had normal relations with the Arab world, then the United States would not pay a diplomatic price for backing Israel so strongly and Israel could join forces with us (and with other regional powers) when common challenges arose. Ending the occupation would also safeguard Israel's relations with countries like Turkey, instead of undermining them. In addition to its obvious human costs, in short, the occupation is a strategic liability for Israel and the United States.

Barack Obama spoke the truth when he said that a "two-state solution is in Israel's interest, the Palestinians' interest, America's interest, and the world's interest." Unfortunately, the U.S. president's actions to date have not brought that goal any closer. In the meantime, those who continue to oppose any effort to use U.S. leverage to bring about a two-state solution are unwittingly harming the two countries they care about most.

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While everyone else is welcoming the hopeful signs from the nuclear negotiations with Iran -- and I'm cautiously encouraged too --I'm going back to the less-than-hopeful news from elsewhere in the Middle East. According to the Associated Press, the Palestinian National Authority has agreed to defer its efforts to get the Goldstone Report on war crimes in the Gaza conflict referred out of the U.N. Human Rights Commission to the Security Council or the General Assembly. This seems puzzling: given the findings of the report, and the fact that roughly 1,300 Palestinians were killed in the carnage (along with 13 Israelis), why would they decide to hold back? Simple: because the United States, principled defender of human rights, put a lot of pressure on them. Here's the Associated Press's explanation (my emphasis):

Senior U.S. and Palestinian officials in Washington and Ramallah, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the Palestinian decision came after heavy U.S. pressure and a warning that going ahead with the resolution would harm the Middle East peace process."

A few comments. First, critics of the report -- including, unfortunately, senior officials in the United States government -- have repeatedly charged that the U.N. Human Rights Commission is biased against Israel and that the original charge given to Goldstone was slanted. I think there's merit to both charges, but they are also irrelevant to judging the report itself or determining how it should be handled. Why? Because Goldstone demanded that the original charge be modified to cover both sides' conduct before he accepted the job, and his demand was accepted by the UNHCR. The fact that the UNHCR has been overly concerned with Israel in the past is regrettable, but says nothing about the validity of the report itself. UNHCR didn't do the investigation and write the report; a distinguished international panel with impeccable credentials did. And other respected human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, have endorsed the report's recommendations too.

Second, although the report contains damning evidence that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes, its main recommendation is that the Security Council require each side to carry out credible investigations of their own conduct and take appropriate action against those responsible for any crimes that were committed. If the responsible parties do this, there is no danger of a subsequent referral to the International Criminal Court, because the Court only has jurisdiction when responsible authorities refuse to investigate in a credible manner.

The United States is reportedly encouraging Israel to conduct a thorough and fair-minded investigation, as are Israeli human rights organizations like B'tselem. And it should be noted that Israel has done so effectively on certain occasions in the past, such as the Kahan Commission that investigated the Sabra and Shatila massacres during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. So in theory, Israel can avoid any call for sanction against specific individuals by doing a serious investigation of its own, provided that it doesn't just whitewash the whole business. (The same logic applies to Hamas, of course, and such a step would in fact be a very interesting move on their part. But I doubt they will.)

Third, it is more than a little ironic to see how the "peace process" (and by extension, the occupation itself) has become a reason to deep-six a report documenting human rights violations. (Never mind that the occupation is itself a violation of human rights and international law). Once again, U.S. policy inadvertently encourages Israeli intransigence: by driving a hard bargain with us on settlements and other key issues, the Israeli government gets its American patron to offer it more and more help (this time in the form of diplomatic cover) just to keep the illusion of a two-state settlement alive. Indeed, the obvious response to the U.S. argument that it has to suppress the Goldstone Report in order to protect the "peace process" is simple: what peace process?

Meanwhile, the stakes for the United States and President Obama just went up a little further. He laid down some big markers in his Cairo speech -- openly committing himself to "two states for two peoples" and declaring that "the settlements must stop" -- only to back down a few months later. Now he's apparently pressured the Palestinian Authority to put the Goldstone Report on the back burner, so as not to harm the "peace process." Well, ok, but he'd better produce something tangible for this latest Palestinian concession. If another six months goes by and there's no meaningful progress toward a two-state solution, then Abbas will look even more ineffectual, Hamas's hard-line approach will gain more adherents, and Obama's big push for Middle East peace will be seen as no different than the patently insincere "peace initiative" that President Bush began at Annapolis in 2007. We will be headed for a one-state solution -- if that is not already inevitable -- and that means big trouble for everyone. And that beautiful speech in Cairo will sound like yet another case of American double-talk.

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I'm not entirely sure what to make of the events surrounding the UN General Assembly, and especially President Obama's ultimately inconsequential meetings with Israeli Prime MInister Netanyahu and Palestinian President Abbas, followed by his statements on these issues during his speech to the General Assembly.

From a short-term, tactical perspective, Netanyahu has clearly won the first round. Obama had demanded a complete halt to settlement building and had told his audience in Cairo last June that "the settlements must stop." Netanyahu refused, hung tough through the summer and Obama eventually backed down. Indeed, the United States is now helping bury the Goldstone Report on Gaza and making it abundantly clear that Israeli intransigence won't affect the "special relationship."

Yet Obama also reiterated his commitment to two states in forceful terms, and said it was time for the parties to commence permanent status negotiations (something Netanyahu has resisted in the past). This development has led shrewd observers like Daniel Levy, M.J. Rosenberg, and FP's Marc Lynch to offer a guardedly optimistic interpretation of the events in New York, suggesting that Netanyahu may have won a tactical victory but suffered a strategic setback. Phil Weiss offers a similar appraisal on the Gaza report, suggesting that Obama and his team decided to let the Gaza report fall by the wayside in order to win over the center of the American Jewish community and put themselves in a better position to broker a two-state solution down the road. In essence, the optimists see Obama as playing a longer game, refusing to get bogged down by what are ultimately tactical issues and focused on the ultimate objective.

By contrast, Israeli observers like Uri Avnery and Gideon Levy offered far more pessimistic appraisals. Their early hopes that Obama and Mitchell would use U.S. leverage to halt the settlements and force Israel to disgorge the territories have been disappointed -- at least for now -- and they are clearly worried that Obama will prove to be all talk and no action. They believe that a two-state solution will simply not occur absent strong U.S. pressure, and they are beginning to doubt that Obama is up to the task.

None of us knows what Obama and his team will do in the future, or how subsequent events may alter the calculations and strategies of the key players. I lean toward the pessimistic side, however, for several reasons. First, Obama has yet to go beyond lofty rhetoric in his approach to this problem, and he has yet to display any serious backbone when it comes to dealing with the Israel lobby. He tossed advisor Rob Malley over the side during the campaign, distanced himself from Zbigniew Brzezinski, remained studiously silent about Gaza during the fighting, and allowed hardliners to torpedo the appointment of Charles Freeman to the National Intelligence Council during his first month in office. It is entirely possible that he'll get tough when the crunch comes; but there's no sign of it so far.

Second, if Obama couldn't even convince Netanyahu to agree to a temporary settlement freeze (and remember, virtually every country in the world regards all settlement building as illegal under international law), then how is he going to persuade him to agree to the terms that everyone knows are the building blocks of a deal? Specifically, how will he get Netanyahu to agree to: 1) borders that provide for a viable Palestinian state, 2) a Palestinian capital in a substantial portion of East Jerusalem, 3) a mutually acceptable arrangement over the holy sites in the Old City, 4) some sort of agreement on the refugee issue (aka "right of return") and 5) the removal of a substantial number of the 300,000 Israelis who are now living outside the 1967 borders?  Maybe there's a rabbit that Obama will pull out of his hat, but it's hard to see where it will come from right now.

Third, as Matt Duss noted yesterday on his own blog, Obama is likely to face something of a credibility problem going forward.  The next time he tries to press Netanyahu, Bibi's hardline advisors are bound to tell him "relax, stick to your guns, just drag things out and eventually the President will blink." In other words, having lost Round 1, Obama and Mitchell will have to work twice as hard to convince Jerusalem that they mean business next time around.

I'd be delighted to be proven wrong about all this, of course, and I did find some of the President's words encouraging (I usually do). I suggested in the Washington Post last week that he needs to use his bully pulpit more effectively, and start explaining to the American people why a two-state solution is in everyone's interest, and the sooner the better. Some of his remarks pointed in that direction, but he's going to have to do a lot more to win enough of the right people over.

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Some semi-random thoughts on events that occurred since Friday.

1. I thought about posting something about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's most recent fit of Holocaust denial, but Juan Cole said everything I would have said with just the right tone of outrage. For what it's worth, I see this latest bit of bile as a sign of desperation on Ahmadinejad's part. The government faced renewed protests last week and seems to be somewhat at a loss for how to deal with its manifest unpopularity. As I noted during the initial round of demonstrations that followed the elections in June, Iran's leaders are increasingly out of touch with the broader population, and especially its younger elements. The clerics are a bunch of old men, and Ahmadinejad himself hardly in the bloom of youth at 53. By contrast, seventy percent of Iran's population is under 30 and was born after the 1980 revolution. Spouting foolish and hateful nonsense about the Holocaust isn't going to buy him much support at home or abroad, and I think it's a sign of waning legitimacy for the clerical regime as presently constituted. I just hope we don't do something stupid that allows him to rally nationalist feeling.

2. A reader wrote in and pointed out that I had incorrectly referred to "Czechoslovakia" in my post last week on Obama's missile defense decision.  My bad; I obviously should have said "Czech Republic." 

3. Why is Benjamin Netanyahu stiffing Obama and Mitchell, and why are they letting him? My answer to that question is in Sunday's Washington Post.

4. Matt Yglesias had a nice comment over the weekend about one of my pet peeves: the infamous "Munich analogy." His obvious but still very important point is that making Adolf Hitler's behavior your standard guide to foreign policy is foolish, because Hitlers are (fortunately) quite rare and you'll do a lot of stupid things when dealing with the overwhelming percentage of governments that aren't Nazi Germany and who aren't led by a genocidal monster.

I would only add a corollary comment: another reason Britain and France had trouble dealing with Hitler is that they were overcommitted in other areas (such as the Far East), and were also loathe to get too close to Stalin's Russia. The lesson (which those who constantly warn of another "Munich" never mention), is that you can get your country in just as much trouble by exaggerating threats and losing sight of strategic priorities as you can by failing to respond vigorously enough when a real challenge arises. For more on how Munich has been misused in policy debates, check out the late Ernest May's "Lessons" of the Past: the Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (1973), and Christopher Layne's article "Security Studies and the Use of History: Neville Chamberlain's Grand Strategy Re-Visited." in the July 2008 issue of Security Studies.

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